


Machinations

by narsus



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Canon - Book, Implied Relationships, M/M, Minor Violence, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-31 02:07:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20107414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narsus/pseuds/narsus
Summary: Post-temporary discorporation Ligur sets out to put things right in his own particular way.





	Machinations

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Good Omens belongs to Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, respective estates, publishers etc.

“How long you going to carry on like this?”  
Hastur ignored the other demon and took a deep drag of his cigarette.  
Ligur moved closer, never breaking his crab-like crouch.  
“Fucking tart. Not like I care.” Hastur offered the cigarette to Ligur.  
Ligur waved it away. “Thought he was your mistress?”  
“Piss off.”

Discorporation wasn’t a death sentence to a demon in the human world. This was a known fact which was why Crowley was generally given the ‘seduce the politician’ type of missions and not the ‘murder their family’ ones. Sometimes he wasn’t even too convincing doing that. Ligur considers those facts as he makes his survey of the various parks of London in search of his prey. There’d been a case, in the nineteen-seventies, when Crowley had been sent on a rather high profile mission to corrupt the Director of Operations of the British Secret Service only to have them turn out to be a very irate Archangel in hiding. Still, Ligur can’t fault Crowley for that; that was just a case of really bad reconnaissance on the part of the people who sent him.

Crowley wasn’t generally known for being violent or murderous. He liked to sun himself in public gardens, buy expensive trinkets and enjoy the tactile feel of smooth human fabric. He wasn’t, by any leap of the imagination, the type of demon who regularly tried to murder his way up the ranks. Ligur had a few, who worked directly for him, who would have pushed him into a baptismal font as soon as look at him, but he kept a close eye on them and generally gave them other things to worry about. The last he’d checked, two of them were trying to find increasingly more elaborate ways to murder each other in a bid for the same, rumoured, promotion. That was the way Ligur liked to run his operation. It made his team constantly watchful and primed to fight. He ran the ‘clean up’ squad after all, ‘cosh and carry’ as some particularly inventive humans had termed the equivalent of their own operations. The ones who turned up to break some bones when things like madness and seduction had failed.

Hastur’s thing was persuasion. Either persuading someone to do something for him, or persuading them to just destroy themselves. There’d been a King in Scotland, centuries ago, who had been persuaded to murder his best friend, the king before him _and_ start a civil war. Hastur had even got directly involved in the civil war part; riding out onto the battle field in armour still tarnished and burnt from his Fall, and lopping of a few heads for good measure. That was how he liked to do things. His team were the ones who manipulated world leaders into taking that one step that was the difference between glorious legend and tragic hero that people would write plays about for years to come. It was _craft_.

Ligur on the other hand was a blunt force instrument and he’d come to put things right by way of blunt force trauma.

He found Crowley sprawled out on the grass in a park as he’d expected he might. He could have stood over Crowley and threatened him but that wasn’t how things were going to go today. He let Crowley realise he was there and sit up, before Ligur grabbed him by the throat and slammed him back down.

“You’ve got some answering to do.”  
Ligur had Crowley by the throat tightly enough that there weren’t going to be any answers other than splutters.

“Damn it! Let go of him!”  
Ligur squinted up at Hastur, feeling bone begin to grind and crack beneath his hand. “Yeah?”  
“Let go.” There was an echo of a threat there, and the world had started to discolour and tilt.  
Ligur let go and sat back on his haunches casually dusting off his hands.  
Crowley, to his credit, lay still and didn’t make any sudden moves.

Hastur knelt beside Crowley and helped him sit up. There was a moment there that Ligur studied; a moment where lesser demon and his lord looked at each other hesitantly, not entirely sure how they were meant to proceed. Ligur snorted. Then Crowley was curled up against Hastur, clinging to the other demon and hissing in Ligur’s direction. Hastur’s arm tightened around Crowley.

“Job done.” Ligur commented companionably as he stood up.

Crowley’s lips curled back from his teeth, serpent fangs rather than human teeth, looking like he might launch himself at Ligur.  
Hastur held him back.

Ligur could hear Crowley complaining about the rough handling as he walked away. Hastur would no doubt make suitable amends, fussing over the insignificant injury, while his mistress whined. It was a job well done. Things had been set right; the machinations of Hell could once again focus their motion. They would once more set their sights on the future, and the glorious Second Rebellion to come.

**Author's Note:**

> Referencing _The Sandbaggers_, a broad swathe of John le Carré novels involving the Scalphunters and _Macbeth_, the quintessential tragic hero.


End file.
